Thursday, September 22, 2011

Zac Hanson remembers well the kind of questions he and two brothers were
being asked during 1996, when their national debut album, "Middle of
Nowhere," was going four-times platinum and the single "MMMBop" was at
the top of the charts.

"We'd do interviews and they'd go, 'OK,
what jobs do you want to have when you grow up?' " recalls the drummer,
who was 11 at the time and is 25 now, married with two children. "It was
so patronizing, so frustrating. You're just like, 'Really? This is what
you're asking me?'

"We said the same thing then as we would say
now, that we'd be doing music whether it's in a garage or a stadium or a
club, whatever, until we can't walk anymore, because it's part of our
blood. It's part of who we are...since we were little kids hearing rock
'n' roll and Motown records from the late 60s and early 60s. It's
something that, when it's in you, you can't do anything else."

And
Hanson -- which also includes Zac's older brothers Isaac, 30 (married
with two children), and Taylor, 28 (married with four children) --
hasn't been doing anything but music since "MMMBop" the group a pop
sensation 15 years ago. The trio has released 10 albums since, the last
five -- as well as three EPs -- on its own 3CG label. Hanson maintains a
steady touring schedule out of its Oklahoma base, and while the band
may not be in the multi-platinum, arena-filling ranks anymore, it's
still alive -- and active -- and its sound has evolved into an
well-crafted, high-energy blend that led no less an arbiter of cool than
the Village Voice to declare Hanson "the finest straight-up rock band
in America."

And Katy Perry gave her stamp of approval by including the brothers in her cameo-filled video for "Last Friday Night."

"It's
hard not to feel pretty damn good about that," Zac notes. "To be able
to come back year after year and play shows and make a career out of it
makes you part of an elite group. Our fans have chosen us as one of
those bands from the 90s that they say, 'Yeah, I'm gonna keep listening
to them. I'm not gonna listen to the Spice Girls anymore. I'm not gonna
listen to the Backstreet Boys anymore. But Hanson, we still like them.'

"We don't take that for granted."

After
releasing its latest album, "Shout It Out," last year, Hanson is taking
this year to take a bit of stock of its past 15 years. For its current
Musical Ride Tour, the trio -- which played each of its five studio
albums in their entirety during a residency last year in New York -- is
letting fans in each city vote for one of the albums the group will
perform at its show there. "It's a way to let our fans experience what
we did in New York, 'cause not many of them could make it there," Zac
notes, and so far he and his brothers have been pleasantly surprised by
the results.

"There's been a lot of variance," he says. "I sort
of expected nostalgia to win handily and to see ('Middle of Nowhere')
most every night, but after the first week in four of the five albums
have already won a different show. It seems much more broad than we
expected.

"It's a crazy thought to us that we have new fans, and
some of them were born around the time that first album came out. So
they're coming to our shows now and they know the later albums like 'The
Walk' and 'Shout It Out' and that's what they want to hear."

But, he adds, the group still feels comfortable playing those songs from their teen years.

"We've
never been a trendy band," Zac explains, "and we've always tried to
write things we would be proud of down the line. Even a song like
'MMMbop'...it's really about relationships and the fact few things last
in life and there's going to be a few things you're gonna hold on to
that are important to you and will last. You have to find what those are
and make sure to grab onto them.

"I think when we play it now,
not only is that message still true but our fans and ourselves have
experienced that kind of feeling and made those kinds of choices. So it
holds up."

Even as it reviews its past, however, Hanson is
starting to eyeball the future. Riding a bit of additional buzz from the
Perry video -- "We were glad to be part of it," Zac says -- Hanson is
planning to release some new music from 2012, but the group is also
looking at the commercial landscape and may not release a conventional
album.

"I think one more normal, 12-song album isn't what we want
to do now," Zac says. "We might do multiple small things, but you're up
against so much multi-media content out there that you really have to
create an experience for people. It's not just something in the
background on the CD player anymore; there has to be an 'activity' of
listening to the music.

"We like to innovate and do things we're
excited about. I mean, we made our first record on two-inch tape and
have seen the full conversion from the end of cassettes and vinyl into
this whole digital age and all these crazy new technologies that seem to
be trying to put musicians out of business. We're just happy we're
still here to be facing that challenge."